When Cancer Spreads
by onlytomriddle
Summary: Yep, that's right! I'm doing exactly what Jhonen told us not to: exploring Johnny's past. Except this one is well thoughtout, so I'm sinning major here! DISCONTINUED [not canon enough for me]
1. God and the Devil

**Author's Note:** I am not Jhonen. That much is clear. ALSO, I do not know if I will want to finish this fanfic, as I foolishly took on a very complex task here. Seriously, I could have picked anything else to write about, and I had to choose the most difficult JV-theme. How am I supposed to know what Johnny was like before all that stuff? However, if I do decide to go through with finishing, it should come out as close as possible to the NNY that we first meet in Issue 1. That is my goal. Thank you for clicking here, and enjoy the story. Yes, I know the beginning is confusing. Read Issue 6 again and you will see my point here, though.

swish

"God, the lifespan-drawings have failed for the third time on Earth. I need for you to create a suicide-encourager for the current waste-lock. We can't have any more murder on our hands. He's not functioning as intended. He's drawing far too much attention to himself, yet he's spreading evil unchecked. Your first waste-lock had a similar situation, though on a much smaller scale, if you recall."

God shifted in his new Laz-E-God armchair. "Of course I recall. But that one was no problem in the end. I'm sure it'll turn out fine with Johnny C. as well, whatever the scale. Thank you, Master, for bringing this to my attention."

"If I didn't, you would never have noticed. We're gonna need a new God sometime soon, too--"

"What do you mean by that!" exclaimed God, his eyes opening wide. He'd only been working for the last 6,000 years or so, and he thought he was doing a fine job of running the cosmos. Better than his predecessor, anyway.

"Nothing, nothing. Just have little Johnny's art betray him; you know the drill. Do this, and I'll give you extra snacks."

"Goodie!" said God. He loved snacks. "Do I get to pick Earth's next waste-lock?" He didn't want his own son to be used again--what a nightmare. At least it was publicity.

"We'll see."

"Done!" Johnny set down his paintbrush on the table next to his latest work. Earlier that day he had seen an especially grating commercial for Pillsbury crescent rolls, and was inspired to make a Doughboy of his own. It wasn't hard to find a styrofoam sculpture of him, though he was disappointed with its height: only about two feet tall. But it wasn't like he was making a public statement with it. It would probably end up lying in the corner of a closet or in the trash. No one would buy styrofoam sculpture, especially something this deranged-looking. Anything with eyes like that... He'd had a dream with eyes like that staring at him... Then he woke up to see the television was on in front of him. It was playing that Pillsbury commercial. Johnny had a curiosity as to how those spiralling eyes would look on that ticklish little Doughboy.

Johnny's version, however, had quite a few further adjustments, not the least of which was the word "Fuck" printed across that ticklish belly. "I'll call you Psycho-Doughboy," he announced. A fitting name for this travesty. Just another middle finger to the commercialism. Commercialism meant people, and that was never good.

He turned around, about to play some Sega, but the phone rang. He ran to the kitchen. He was hoping it would be anyone --prankster, ex-girlfriend, telemarker-- except...

"Oh, hi, Mr. Crenshaw. No, I don't have the rent. I promise I'll get it to you by--"

"Mr. C., I'm afraid this cannot go on any longer. Last time I called it was the _final warning_," the caller interrupted. Johnny could just see his fat tush sitting in a leather recliner somewhere across town, getting fatter on bon-bons and pork rinds. The expensive kind. "I have no choice but to evict you. You haven't paid in months, and I've been very generous. I'm sorry."

"Like Hell you're fucking sorry," Johnny snapped, and then hung up on him. What was he going to do now? He had seen it coming, but what else could he do but wait? He wasn't exactly a businessman. People with records like his could hardly be expected to support themselves without help. Someday he would get old Mr. Crenshaw. So much fun it would be to raid the dead man's pockets and buy all the Brain-Freezies he wanted, without ever worrying about next month's rent.

Such thoughts had never bothered him, but they were often very distracting. He had tried day jobs, but violent fantasies kept him from being a good employee. The occasional acting upon those fantasies never helped, either. The only thing that made them come to life, however, was when people would distract him from his distractions. He hated distractions. Just once in his life he would like to truly focus on something worthwhile, not that a pathetic job working at a cafe could be considered worthwhile.

Johnny decided to start driving around the neighborhood to see if there were any apartments for rent even cheaper than his own. He didn't doubt what a difficult time it could be for him to find one. His own residence was somehow even cheaper than his car, which had been given to him by his father before he mysteriously vanished.

He grabbed his car keys, and, taking one last look at Psycho-Doughboy, he shut the door behind him.

He had left home at about 6:30, but now it was past 8:00 and still he had found nothing. Unless of course you count a gaggle of jerks standing outside a bar. But he dealt with the ones who didn't manage to run away from his crowbar. He didn't care about getting the rest, as it was already dark and he was getting tired of looking for apartments.

Stopping at an intersection, Johnny heard a faint hammering sound farther up the street where he was going. When he approached he saw a blond man in glasses and a business suit hammering a wooden sign into his lawn: "For Sale." The house behind him looked even worse than his apartment building, so it wouldn't sell for much, he figured. He stopped at the curb and got out before the man looked up.

"How much are you asking for this place?" he asked, approaching the man.

"Five hundred thousand."

Johnny stopped walking. "You're nuts."

The man laughed, holding out his hand. "Ha ha, just kidding. Juan Diablo, and you are...?"

Johnny was a bit repulsed by his outgoing behavior, but finished the handshake and answered, "Johnny C. Nice to meet you." Of course the second sentence was a lie; he just wanted to know how much the house cost.

There was a pause where the man was apparently trying to remember something, but he soon snapped his fingers. "Johnny C.! You're the-- Are you looking for a house?"

"Well, an apartment, maybe, but..."

"You can just have this one! No charge!" Johnny looked at Juan suspiciously when he said this. "Uh... My wife just had a baby, and we need to upgrade as soon as possible. I think you'll enjoy some of the things I've left in the basement! I'll even help move your things!"

"Uh, that's very kind sir. Why--" Johnny started. Juan snapped his fingers again and both he and the sign were gone, leaving only two mysterious scorch marks. Johnny cursed and got back into his car. He wasn't sure why he was angry, though. Oh well. He was always angry at something, it seemed.

Soon he was back at the apartment that was no longer his and opening the door. But then he saw that Mr. Diablo wasn't joking. All of his things were gone. The place was empty. He checked in every room, but there was no sign that anyone lived there anymore. This creeped him out. He would have called Mr. Crenshaw for one last insult, but the phone was gone too. He returned to his new house.

Inside, the place was just plain cruddy. There were no decorations, no carpets, not even panes of glass in the front windows. All but one were boarded up. No wonder it was free. Still, Johnny was suspicious. Sure, the house was miserable and decrepit, but there had to be _something_ about it that made the man so eager to give it to him for free. He had mentioned things in the basement... Wouldn't that just make it more valuable? What were they?

Johnny was pleased to see that the house had been furnished with his own property, probably in the instant after it all disappeared. Though strong in his own right, he didn't have the muscle to move all his furniture across town. Or the money to. He decided not to devote much thought to Mr. Diablo's obvious powers, as it would probably just hurt his head. Try as he might, some things (like crop circles) just could not be figured out. This was simply one of those things to him.

About an hour of nothing later, the whole house shook. Alarmed, Johnny got up and looked out a nearby window through a gap between the pieces of wood. He kept looking until it shook again, which was when he noticed that nothing was being affected outside. It was something in the house. He set to exploring.

What he had assumed to be a closet near the back of the house was actually a staircase to the basement. Another, more violent quake made some dust fall from the ceiling of the staircase when he opened the door, so he went down there to investigate the noise.

His growing fear was enough to keep him from being distracted by the complexity of his basement, which was actually quite startling, so he found the source of the noise in just a few minutes. One room down there was particularly loud, and one of the walls was starting to crack from all the shaking. He was just about to approach it when it emitted a loud, creaking groan, like the awakening of a huge rusty robot from Hell. At least that's what Johnny thought it sounded like. He gasped and staggered backward at the hideous noise, which was accompanied by another shaking. He could actually see the wall thump this time.

"Bloooood..." It whispered sickeningly to him. The voice was hoarse, and not at all human.

Was this why the house was free?

swish

**Author's Note:** Didja like it? Tell me in the form of a college-educated review! Thanks.

I'm working on a chapter that will almost certainly appear in here later, concerning Nailbunny.


	2. Trances

**Author's Note:** Here it is, the anxiously-awaited (I'm sure) chapter two. This one is much darker than the first, and I must say I enjoy it a little bit more. The first was mostly a prologue, anyway. Thank you all so much for the reviews! We still have a looong way to go before we meet Canon NNY.

Oh yeah, and I barely have the right to make fanfiction, since Johnny and all his little nuances do not belong to me. They belong to that evil overlord Mr. Chancre Scolex. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I don't know what you're doing in this section. This, that, and other things!

swish

"God, just what the Hell are you doing? I gave you a job to do almost five Earth-months ago. Do I need to start giving you deadlines?"

"No, Master, I can do it now." The Destiny remote had gone missing, anyway. What else was there to do but what was needed? "The boy has depressive tendencies already, so it shouldn't take too long to work."

"That's no excuse for putting it off. I'll give him 10 years to die, and if your plan doesn't work then we'll simply do a complete overhaul in the year 2000. New God and everything. I only wish... that I could... be... it myself... but..."

"There, there..." whispered God, feeling no sympathy at all.

---

Johnny was exhausted. It had been a hard day's work of killing, dragging, draining, painting. He had almost perfected the routine. That horrific wall. That hideous wall that demanded sustenance. But at least it gave him something to do. Something to do with the bodies. It would be another several days or so until he started dreading the house shaking again, and when that happened, it wouldn't require so much dragging this time. He had taken to torturing some of the verbal assailants at home now. A few days after moving in (or being moved in) he finally figured out what Juan meant by "things I've left in the basement." And they were useful.

He was sitting on the floor, in the corner. That was his favorite place on the floor. He could let his head fall back and still see the whole room. He decided against the couch because it was soft. Soft like the human heart. Psycho-Doughboy was propped up against the wall to his left, right near a doorway. Everything was fairly calm, both inside and outside. It must have had something to do with being so worn-out. Why wasn't it always like this? _Oh yeah, the sleep. I don't want that._ He had never liked sleep, be it a five-minute nap or a night-long hibernation, and he always tried to avoid it. And he was getting dangerously close to failure.

"Maybe I should go do something to wake up. See if any bands are playing at the venue right now," he said aloud. Thoughts could fade, but talking kept noise in the room. He thought anyway. _You don't want to go near people, do you? Besides, silly Johnny, you can't do anything without money._ "I can get a Frooty Pop without money. I'd rather pay, but--" _Are you so destitute that you can't even buy food?_ "Of course I am, and you know that. Wait-- I know that. Never mind." Johnny straightened his back a little so that his shoulders weren't all cramped in the corner behind him. _Eh, you don't need food._ "No, I don't." Did he just agree with himself? "Whatever."

He turned his head toward Psycho-Doughboy, who was placed at such an angle that he was starting to slide and make the smallest squeak of friction on the wall. It bugged him, so he leaned over to grab it before it disturbed the order of the room. Though bloodstained and sparsely furnished, that front room still needed to be kept in a certain way to keep Johnny from... being annoyed. He wasn't sure.

He stood up with his customized styrofoam and held it out in front of him, arms fully extended. "Hello there, Psycho-Doughboy," said Johnny with a fake smile that was surely lost on the whole world._ Well, hello, Johnny. Nice weather we're having._ "Shut up! You're not Psycho-Doughboy, you're me! And what do you care about-- I mean, what do I care about the weather?" He started on a prolonged yawn, but stopped halfway through when he realized that he was closer than ever to drifting off. He put Psycho-Doughboy back on the floor in a proper position. He really didn't have a friend in the world. _I'm your friend._ Johnny was getting frustrated. "No you're not, you're me! I already told you that." _When you tell yourself things, you're usually lying._ "Shut up!" _Okay, but don't fall asleep._ Now that sounded more like it.

---

He was so very tired. Tired of the same old routine: be bored, go out, witness living filth in action, kill, paint the wall. So tired of life. Life was the plague of the Earth. It would be so much better off without any living things to leech off of its natural beauty. The beauty of nothing, of peace, of silence. Anyone could achieve this beauty themselves, but only after suffering the brutality of a living environment. It was just too much. Why was he sending these cretins to their deaths when he could simply go to his himself to be rid of them forever?

"Everyone..." he groaned to himself. He couldn't finish his sentence. He meant to say that everyone has their own little room where they live. A living room, if you will. Painted on the ceiling are the stars. Painted in the pictures on the walls are the demons that surround you. You're always looking at one of them, unless you look down at the floor. People like the floor. They don't really want to fly. They're afraid of that ceiling. Right then Johnny wasn't afraid to fly. _Flying is a lot nicer than it seems. Don't you want to fly? To leave that stink-closet behind? Stars can only go so high._ "That's true. And I want to go higher." _You deserve better than what you've been given. Leave it all behind._ "What comes after that?" _We can find out together._ "But you're-- Never mind. Leave it all behind, that's what matters." _Yessss._

He started descending the stairs to his basement, a big long knife in mind. He knew what he was going to do and where he was going to go. He had never been so sure in his entire life. Life. "Pfft."

Every stone step down felt like a metaphor. He hoped it wasn't really, because he wanted to go up, not down. Either way it didn't make much sense. He still wasn't too familiar with his own house, even after this long, but he had no trouble finding this one particular room. It was one of his many knife rooms. From butter knives to scimitars, this room had plenty hanging on the wall. He spent almost forty seconds trying to decide which knife was best. Eventually, his gaze stopped on one that was nice and clean. The blade was about a foot long, with one serrated edge and one blunt. The hilt was round and the handle was covered in leather. It was beautiful.

Numbly, almost unconsciously, he stepped forward to take the knife from the wall. The whole world seemed to fall away when he gripped the handle and held out the blade. He was a mighty knight, here to save the king from his land...

"Yes! I did it!" Johnny dropped the knife, doubled over, and started breathing heavily. It was as if he had been drowning in an ocean, and then resurfaced to meet a turbulent storm wide awake. Someone was yelling from a distance. _How dare they--_ "I'm finally free!" Never, in the entire life he tried to abandon, was he so incensed._ Kill them now, and get yourself afterwards._

Pure instinct made him tear back up to the first level of his basement, right in front of the door that led to ground level. Luckily, he made it there before the escapee. When he arrived Johnny stared into his eyes and said with a terrifying calmness, "You'd have met a much kinder fate, had you stayed where you were." He was still breathing pretty heavily, and his heart must have been making up for lost beats.

The escapee was a man of about thirty, with graying hair but a young face. His most prominent feature was his enormous forehead. He wasn't bald but his forehead was huge anyway. He was here because of an incident at the mall several weeks earlier; after dropping the price checker in front of Johnny, he so brazenly cried, "Whoopsie-daisie!" If Johnny thought he was having a bad day then, it was nothing to how he felt now at his house. The man, when he first entered the room, looked exalted. Now that he was being confronted by his former captor, there was no shortage of fear and shock in his eyes. He looked speechless, and pretty soon something in Johnny's throat snapped.

"Why the _fuck_ did you start shouting?" he demanded, on the verge of screaming. "I'm trying to commit suicide over here, and I have you... Fuck you!" Johnny was looking wildly around the room, trying to find a suitable weapon for him. A few seconds later, he found another wall of knives behind him. _You picked a good house, Johnny._ "Shut up, I don't need you in this." The man looked a bit confused at this, but was ignored. The man, who was starting to step back, was obviously facing some kind of... maniac.

Johnny wasn't picky about which knife to use this time --he barely even glanced at it in his hand-- but it felt good to corner his victim, take all control away from him, just as he had done to Johnny a few minutes ago. He struck. He shuddered at the feel of warm foreign blood on his cold hands, but he could wash it off later. The man was gasping and sputtering, trying to shriek but not having the strength. Johnny pulled the knife back out of the man's chest and slashed at his belly. It easily went through his ragged clothes. By now Johnny was used to the nauseating sound of taut skin being cut open... The man fell to the ground, still trying to breathe. He kicked the man in the ribs with his pointy boots, only to hear another fresh gasp. _He's not getting up again. Go back to what you were doing before, while you're still feeling violent! It'll be over that much faster! _Johnny ignored his voice and grabbed a bigger knife from the wall.

---

He must have been in three totally different trances that night. First, he was content, then he was suicidal, and then he beat his own record for most vicious murder. This was a bit frightening; he had never acted this bipolar before, and that's saying a lot. "Maybe I'm tripolar," he mused. _Don't be ridiculous._

But were they all "trances"? The contentment could easily have been one clear moment of peace that he just didn't recognize. It can happen. And the suicide attempt... The thoughts leading up to it made enough sense, but he didn't feel real, somehow, when he was about to do it. He could barely even remember which knife he chose and in which room it was. In a way he was kind of glad that he hadn't gone through with it-- with a final moment so blurry, would he have even remembered it in the afterlife? Assuming there was one. No, digression. That murder _must_ have been a trance. He had been killing for several years now, but he could never recall _enjoying_ it so much. What was up with that? _And what was with you blowing me off like that? Why didn't you take my advice instead of tearing up that bastard more than you needed to? You could be lying dead right now, but no--_

"I'm not talking to you right now." _I'm sitting right next to your stream of consciousness. I think I have a right to participate in it. _"Then leave! Jesus, leave me alone!" That voice. That voice had to have something to do with it. There he was, all happy to be alive (comparatively), and then someone just starts telling him to be the opposite. "You're very rude, you know that?"

No answer.

"Good, now I can get back to..." He lost his train of thought. Again! Johnny was leaning against a (clear) wall with his arms folded. The water he had used to wash off the blood had just dried, and he felt warmer now. He looked up at the ceiling and pounded one of his fists on the cracked plaster behind him. Why could he never focus? There was a fly on the ceiling, and he didn't have a flyswatter. He looked back down, this time at his boots. There was still some dark brown gunk on his left toe-hoof.

Then he remembered something that always helped him focus. Heck, it even killed time. Painting. His last painting was finished last week, and he had gotten plenty of inspiration since then. Maybe not so much during these trances, but that could be an idea in itself.

swish

**Author's Note:** There you go, end of chapter two. If he seems a little mature or whatever, that is intentional. I plan on having him make a major regression when "The Sickness" enters the arena. We still have several years to go before Nailbunny, so please be patient. I'm eager too. And Mr. Eff needs a couple of years, too. I do my research! Thanks for reading, and _please_ review! Suggestions for catchy lines like "Maybe I'm tripolar" (I love that line. It's a perfect NNY moment!) will seriously be considered.


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